Bateau-Lavoir prés du Pont-Neuf, Paris; Johan Jongkind

From our vantage point in time, we have a tendency to call paintings like this one — with its loose, painterly brushwork, depiction of everyday events, and contrasting complementary colors — “impressionistic”.

It’s another reminder that the characteristics we associate with French Impressionism were not invented out of whole cloth by Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille, but were in large part a logical progression from painters who immediately preceded them.

Like similar works by Charles-François Daubigny, this was painted several years prior to Monet’s first known painting, let alone the height of the Impressionist style, which came a decade later.

Here, Johan Jongkind, a Dutch painter who worked extensively in Paris, portrays a laundry boat moored in the Siene near the Pont-Neuf.

This is hardly the romantic image we have of the Seine in the 19th century, but that was part of the point of the move toward “Realism” instigated by painters like Courbet and Corot, that the everyday activities or ordinary people were worthy of painting, not just the romanticized and idealized visions of Academic painting.

Jongkind painted at least one other interpretation of this scene — a composition in darker light, with a vantage point closer to the boat and bridge — that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was painted perhaps earlier the same year.

The painting shown here is currently in a private collection; it was sold through Sotheby’s auctions in 2011.

Link is to Wikimedia Commons, which has a downloadable version of the image.

The Tower of Babel, Marten van Valckenborch the Elder

The link is to a zoomable version of the image on Google Art Project; there is a downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; the original is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden State Art Museums.

Flemish Renaissance painter Marten van Valckenborch painted a number of complex compositions depicting the Biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel (of which you can find some other examples here and here).

I’ve found this one in particular to be striking in its dark, sombre tones, set against a light but clouded sky and framed by a cradle of dark foreground elements.

The repetition of forms and change in size of the elements as the tower ascends has a fascinatingly recursive feel to it.

It’s interesting to compare Van Vlakenborch’s interpretations to that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which was undoubtedly a primary influence on them, and on similar takes on the subject by other artists.

The story of the Tower of Babel is a story of hubris, a term we should all have in our awareness as we watch current events unfold.